A Watershed Year

by Susan Schoenberger

  “Why are we so happy?” Lucy asked.

  “Because,” Lesta said, opening the hotel door for her. “I call the director this morning, and she say everything good. No more problem. Just five hundred dollars.”

  “Five hundred dollars?”

  “Yes, and you take Mat.”

  “Today? You mean I could take him home right away?”

  “You must go to court hearing, get his passport and birth certificate, then you take him back to Moscow for visa. Five hundred dollars.”

  “But how did this happen? I don’t understand.”

  “This is good boy, Lucy McVie. Healthy boy. No worry.”

  Nothing felt right about this new arrangement, but Lucy didn’t know if she could reasonably object. She had the money with her; it wasn’t that. And she could no more walk away from Mat now than she could walk away from her family, or cancel Harlan’s e-mails, or turn her back on the saints. It just left her with that ripped-off used-car feeling again.

  She followed Lesta to his car, got in, and gripped the door as he took off around a corner, wondering how he could distinguish the cloudy sky from the gray pavement and the grayish buildings and the soot-covered cars.

  Before long, they were back in front of the children’s home, ringing the doorbell. This time, Lucy was nervous but more resolute. The cleaning lady answered the door once again and led them to the playroom they had passed on the way to the dormitory the night before.

  The room smelled strongly of beets, and two of the four overhead lights were out, leaving the room in a kind of twilight, darker than it was outside. Lesta moved a rocking chair toward Lucy, but she couldn’t sit down. She felt she might have to run to the bathroom if they had to wait too long. Other than the rocking chair, the room had only a small brownish rug and a children’s table with three mismatched chairs. She wondered if this was where Mat had drawn his card on the blue construction paper.

  Minutes passed, and they heard nothing. No sounds of children playing or laughing or even being scolded. She could only hope they were all on a field trip or out on a playground that couldn’t be seen from the front of the building. Just when she was about to start searching the place on her own, the director came to the door holding the hand of the little boy whose face Lucy had examined countless times in a single photograph. He was here with her, finally, on the same continent, in the same country, the same city, the same room, within her reach. And he was awake. She had rehearsed this moment in her head a hundred times.

  “Azamat,” she said, getting down on her knees. His brown eyes took her in as though she were a piece of furniture. He wore a pair of blue sweatpants that were too long for him and a light blue polo shirt. One of his socks was white, or had been white and now was closer to gray, and the other was yellow. He wore no shoes. She looked at Lesta. “Does he understand who I am?”

  Mat let go of Mrs. Minsky’s hand and made a detour around Lucy to play with a small truck that was missing a wheel. It was a dump truck, and he piled some blocks in the back of it, then rammed it into the wall. He had not smiled since he entered the room, but he didn’t appear to be afraid of strangers. He merely looked indifferent, focused on the truck and his opportunity to play without rivals.

  Lesta went to speak to Mrs. Minsky as Lucy sat down on the floor and stacked blocks, watching Mat as her heart pumped so forcefully she imagined she could hear it. She found herself organizing the blocks into groups by size—straining to hear what Lesta was saying even though she could understand none of it—when Mat took the truck and slammed it into one of her block towers, sending the little cubes flying. This made him smile, and Lucy felt as though they had passed from strangers to friends. She smiled back and stacked the blocks again. They played their little game of stack and destroy until Lesta came over to speak to her.

  “Excuse me, Lucy McVie, and young boy, yes, excuse me,” Lesta said, clearly flustered. “The director is telling me that boy is, perhaps, not understanding his adoption.”

  “I was told his father terminated his parental rights. Isn’t that what happened?”

  Lesta went back to Mrs. Minsky as Mat stayed on his knees and slammed the dump truck into Lucy’s towers of blocks. Lesta returned.

  “Yes, this is the case. Termination of rights. He was brought into system last year, after his mother died. His father has a job with long hours and did not feel he could take proper care of him. This is not unusual here. His father came to visit him several times in baby home but has not been to visit since he came here. You explain, she say. Someday, he understands.”

  Mrs. Minsky bent down and spoke to Mat for a long time, curtly and without touching him. Then she pulled a little on his arm until he stood up and led him toward Lucy.

  “This is your new mother,” Lesta translated. “She will take you to America.”

  Mat looked up at Lesta, questioning with his eyes but saying nothing. Lucy could tell that Lesta’s words had only confused him. Didn’t they prepare him at all?

  The director explained, through Lesta, that Lucy would attend a court hearing that afternoon and could pick up Mat immediately after. They would have his belongings packed.

  “These are for you,” Lucy said, handing the director a bag of new clothing for the other children and the other gifts her guidebook had recommended for the orphanage: mostly candy and over-the-counter medicine. Then she reached into her purse and took out five crisp hundred-dollar bills. She was embarrassed by the money, by what it said about Americans who could enter another country and walk away with one of its sons or daughters. At the same time, it impressed her, the power of these virtually weightless slips of paper, their undeniable persuasiveness.

  “I was hoping to get a little more information about his health,” she said, her voice steady, her fake confidence returning.

  Mrs. Minsky took the money, folded it carefully, said something to Lesta, and then left the room.

  “He is healthy, she say. Nothing but colds,” Lesta said. “She goes to get medical records.”

  Mrs. Minsky returned a few minutes later and handed Lucy a sheaf of papers, handwritten in Russian. Lesta took them and flipped through the pages.

  “Two ear infections. Bronchitis in March. Underweight. Normal reflexes,” he read.

  As Lesta tried to interpret the records, the director took Mat’s hand and began to lead him toward the door. But he let go and walked back over to where Lucy was standing. She smiled at him, her lips stretched tight. It was a smile so eager to convey sincerity that she was sure it couldn’t have looked more insincere. He stood for a moment, his face impassive. Then his lips formed the shape of an O, and his tongue emerged slowly, curled at first, then flattening out so he could give her the full effect of his rejection.

  “Azamat!” the director said, yanking him away by one arm. “Nyet!”

  Lucy sat down in the rocking chair as the director hauled a stoic Mat away. She tried to examine the worn linoleum, which shimmered before her as though it were under water.

  “Lucy McVie?” Lesta said. “You okay?”

  She didn’t answer because she felt as if she had been pushed off a dock into a very cold lake and still couldn’t catch her breath. The books she had read had made it seem as though orphaned children couldn’t wait to be adopted. Then again, she couldn’t guess what his life had been like before, couldn’t imagine what Mrs. Minsky might have told him. And she, after all, was just some stranger who showed up one day and wanted him to love her. How could he understand that?

  “I’m fine, Lesta,” she said when her voice returned. “Let’s go finish this.”

  ON THE SIXTEENTH OF MAY in the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Three, a judge created a family. It was a small family, just a mother and a son, but it was official. Lucy could only wish that some of her own family had been there to witness it, to whistle and cheer inappropriately, and to offer more than the polite handshake she received from Lesta. They left the courthouse and stopped at two government offices to gath
er Mat’s birth certificate and his new passport.

  “Well, Lucy McVie,” Lesta said as they headed back to the children’s home. “Congratulations. This go very smooth.”

  “It did?”

  “Yes, this judge often question this paper or that paper. Now we get little Azamat, and tonight, chicken Kiev.”

  Lucy was relieved, but not as much as she had hoped to be. Even with her motherhood sanctified by a judge, she felt completely unmoored at the thought of taking Mat away from the children’s home. Eventually, when he could speak English, she would be able to explain in detail why she was taking him away and why his father wasn’t coming back. But right now, she couldn’t smooth things over with words. Not her own words, anyway.

  At the front door, she asked Lesta what she could do.

  “You have toy?” he asked.

  “But the book I read said not to bring too many toys, not to bribe a child for affection.”

  “What does book know?”

  “Well, I do have one toy I was saving for the hotel,” she said, digging through her purse. “It’s a little bubble maker.”

  “Shaped like car?”

  “Little boys like cars, don’t they? Why didn’t I know that?”

  “No, bubbles good. Better than nothing.”

  Inside, they were shown directly to Mrs. Minsky’s office, which wasn’t much bigger than a closet, with a desk, three chairs, and a filing cabinet. It was noticeably devoid of toys or drawings. Mrs. Minsky had been at the court hearing and had made no objections to Mat’s adoption. She motioned for Lucy to sit down and opened a file on her desk. She asked Lucy to sign a few more documents and put them back in the file, closing it.

  “Do I have a copy of the termination papers?” Lucy asked.

  “They are with your packet of materials from the court,” Mrs. Minsky said as Lesta translated.

  Lucy shuffled through the stack of papers, but most of the documents were in Russian. Some of them had English translations, but she sensed that Mrs. Minsky wanted to get on with it. Her day was all about schedule, Lucy could tell, and something like an adoption threw everything off.

  “Just a few more questions. What can you tell me about him, his personality?”

  Mrs. Minsky seemed to have trouble understanding Lesta’s translation. They spoke for a while before Lesta turned back to Lucy.

  “He is, she say… difficult.”

  “Difficult how?”

  In reply, Mrs. Minsky released a torrent of Russian.

  “Resistant to schedule, reluctant to do chores, prone to striking other children. He threw his potato once at the cook. But we attribute this to late arrival at children’s home. Most children have been here since they were babies,” Lesta translated as she spoke.

  “Do you think he’ll cooperate with me?” she asked. “Do you have any advice?”

  “Be firm. He is very strong-willed. With stable home, stable family, he will improve. And now, we get your new son for you. You have toys?”

  Lucy had a hundred more questions, but Mrs. Minsky was already standing, halfway out the door. Lucy dug out the small bubble maker, which had to be filled with bubbles. She was unwrapping the package when Mat was brought in, wearing a thin navy-blue cloth coat and a small red knit cap on his head. He was clutching a ragged stuffed animal that looked as if it might have been a monkey in better days. Lesta bent down to speak with him.

  “I’m going to drive you to your nice new mother’s hotel, where you will stay overnight in a big bed with television,” he said in Russian first, translating for Lucy. “Would you like to come to my house for dinner tonight?”

  Mat squeezed his toy animal and shook his head. The director, who might have intervened, was stuffing papers in a filing cabinet. Then Lucy tried, through Lesta.

  “Tell him that I like his… um, monkey? And I have some bubbles for him.”

  Lesta translated, and Mat peered up at Lucy. She looked for a softening of his hard expression but didn’t find it. Instead, he grabbed the bubble toy, which she had managed to fill. He turned a crank and sent a few dozen bubbles into the air, then ran out of the room yelling with the toy.

  “Where’d he go?” Lucy asked.

  “He go to show other boys,” Lesta said. “Because the toy is only for him.”

  “Oh, great. Now we’ll never get him out of here.”

  The director turned away from her filing cabinet. “Best to leave now,” she said through Lesta.

  They found Mat in the playroom, filling the air with bubbles, and Lucy tried to take his hand. He resisted, but she led him firmly toward the door as he shouted all kinds of things in Russian she was glad she couldn’t understand. Once outside, the fresh air seemed to calm him down a bit, and she helped him climb into the backseat, sliding in next to him. As they drove away, he began to cry and mumble, hiding his face in the smoky upholstery.

  “What’s he saying, Lesta?”

  “I cannot hear words, only crying.”

  She tried to put a hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged her off. They drove back to the hotel that way, Mat sobbing and Lucy turning every brain cell inside out for some clue about what to do next. She was terrified, completely at a loss for how to convey to Mat that she wasn’t the enemy. She was no better than her mixed-up nation, invading another country without an exit strategy. What had she done?

  thirteen

  * * *

  By the time they returned to the Best Eastern, Mat had fallen into a fitful sleep punctuated by an occasional hiccup. Lucy carried him into the lobby from Lesta’s car, his head bobbing against her shoulder. She was grateful to avoid dragging a screaming child through the hotel, but even more grateful for the chance to hold him, to support his slight weight and feel his warm breath on her neck. Lesta followed into the elevator and down the carpeted hall, holding her paperwork. He stood in the hallway outside the open door as she laid Mat down on one of the double beds and came back into the hallway to collect her papers.

  “I wait here for you,” Lesta said.

  “For what?”

  “For getting ready. The chicken Kiev.”

  “But look at him. He’s exhausted. I think we better stay here.”

  “This is too bad, Lucy McVie. This mean many leftovers.”

  “I’m so sorry. Tell your wife I’m sorry, too. I just don’t think we’re up for it.”

  “You make flight back to Moscow. I take you to airport tomorrow.”

  “Thank you for everything. You’ve been so wonderful.”

  Lesta hovered, turning to go several times but failing, as though his feet were not cooperating. Lucy finally realized what was happening and ran back into the room for her purse.

  “Here, Lesta,” she said, handing him five bills. “I wish it could be more.”

  He looked down at the money in his hand, the last of the crisp hundreds she had withdrawn from the bank when she had emptied her savings account. He seemed pleased by what was there and nodded his head as she looked back to make sure Mat was still asleep. The fear she had felt when they left the children’s home had subsided only slightly, leaving a film in her mouth. She longed to brush her teeth.

  “Best of good luck for you, Lucy McVie,” Lesta said from the hall.

  She stretched her hand across the doorway, but Lesta wouldn’t take it.

  “No, no,” he said, backing away. “Bad luck to shake over threshold.”

  Instead, she stepped out into the hallway, threw her arms around him, and hugged him tightly, and he hugged her back, kissing her quickly on each cheek.

  “I go home now,” he said. “Call when you know time of flight.”

  When he left, Lucy sat down on the edge of the bed to watch Mat as he slept, still buttoned into his cloth coat. His hiccupping had stopped, and he seemed to be in a near coma, too distraught to cope with consciousness. She rested her palm on his forehead, pressing it against the short stubble on his hairline. She imagined another time, maybe only weeks from now, when she would
take him to Arnold’s drugstore and scoop up a little bag of candy for him. If he was like Paul’s kids, he’d go for the Gummi Bears or something else that adhered to the back molars. That’s all she wanted for him, the opportunity to eat too much sugar like every other normal American kid.

  Of course, her idea of “normal” was her own upbringing. So that meant being loved by people who had very little understanding of her accomplishments—the articles published in obscure journals, the fellowships, the teaching posts—but bragged about them anyway. It meant having a brother who threatened to beat-up the joker who pointed and laughed when her towering stack of books spilled all over the floor of the school bus. It meant having a father whose eyes watered every time he saw an American flag and who taught her that most people working for the government weren’t crooks. It meant having a mother whose love comforted and smothered her at the same time. Could she be all those things for Mat? Would he let her?

  She couldn’t help but wonder, for a moment, what Harlan would have been like as a father. Before his illness, he once told her that he loved children, but only between the ages of five and eleven. “Before and after, they’re self-centered and whiny,” he had said. “If you get six good years out of them, you’re lucky.” She had responded that it’s not the same with your own children, but he had shaken his head and grinned. “Six good years, as I say, if you’re lucky.”

  Mat stirred as she took off his sneakers and cautiously unbuttoned his coat. She couldn’t figure out how to remove the coat without waking him, so she pulled up the edge of the thin bedspread and draped it over him. It was past dinnertime, and she was starving. She thought about running down to the restaurant, but she couldn’t risk the chance that he would be further traumatized by waking up alone in a strange room. She couldn’t imagine trying to negotiate room service, if it even existed. Instead, she found another crumbled granola bar in her carry-on and ate that, drinking lukewarm water from a bottle she had brought on the plane.